


The Date

by sunshinestealer



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5735017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alphys is exhausted from her (self-imposed) workload. Until she gets a call from Undyne, concerned for her wellbeing. Then she's ordered to take the day off and come around Undyne's. Fluff, basically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Date

It began as a very simple social media message. Alphys had been working on some code, shuffling back and forth to her kitchen for energy drinks and coffee after three all nighters in a row. She was just so, so close!

And then the program failed to export. She’d been too tired to notice the bugs cropping up in the code until it was too late — and now, over a quarter of a million lines of code into this AI, she’d have to go through it all _again_ , line by line to find out just what the fault was. She rarely ever lost her cool, but Alphys had felt like screaming. She rubbed her tired eyes, dragging herself back towards the kitchen for coffee. Or Red Bull. Whatever kept her awake just a little longer.

She made a social media post while waiting for the coffee pot to heat up. Sure, it was bad form to grouse about workplace issues on the Internet, but she was too fatigued to care at this point. Plus, Asgore would hardly fire her for poor social media usage when he himself typed like he had a slow, furious vendetta against each letter on the keyboard, and could barely open a page on a web browser.

God, the coffee was taking ages to boil. Alphys’ legs slid out from under her, and she sat down against the cabinets, rubbing her temple with one hand and texting with another.

** _bad day @ work. this research is killing me. =m=_ **

There. Nothing too nasty about her place of employment. Just a general complaint about too much work, which happened to the best of people.

Alphys thought she had probably been a little _too_ overly earnest in the job application. Experience in robotics, programming various languages, biology, chemistry, physics, technological improvements to organic tissue, magic… She should have just picked a single major at the Royal University, rather than drifting in and out of a full roster of classes each semester until their Science Department eventually just threw a non-specific honours degree at her, topped up with a final Master’s in computer science and a PhD in biochemistry. All completed within two years, too! She’d been proud of herself for that, but chaining herself to her desk with only a few minutes per day dedicated to leisure had never won her too many friends.

Well, except for online. When she was announced as the Royal Scientist, she had been given an official checkmark next to her screen name and her list of friends and followers had exploded into the hundreds (the former) and thousands (the latter). Still not as many as the King, who never posted any updates and yet boasted an online following many would kill for.

One by one, the replies came in. No trolls, thankfully, just monsters kind enough to sympathise and offer up distractions (like Mew Mew comedy videos, bless them) and suggestions of how to keep calm during stressful periods of work. While folks like the innkeeper in Snowdin probably didn’t have the same workload as the kingdom’s Royal Scientist, the sentiment was still appreciated.

Then a different kind of message — a PM, in fact. Alphys gulped when she saw the name of the sender.

Undyne. The rather… passionate Captain of the Royal Guard. She’d trained under a war veteran, bashing down obstacles with extreme violence the moment they got in the way of her plans. And now, after several years of hard work and proving herself in capturing the human souls, Undyne had gotten the job she had dreamed of since childhood.

She was often too intense to talk to, though. Well. The socially anxious scientist found the majority of people too intense to talk to. But, fatigue seemed to have lowered her inhibitions, and she clicked the notification.

** _Hey! What’s with that last status?_ **

Now the message was marked ‘read’, and it would have been impolite to not reply to it promptly.

** _just a bad day. nothing else! >_<_ **

Alphys hated the churning of her stomach. It was _just a conversation_ , for goodness’ sake! Not even face to face! She took deep breaths and stimmed with a fistful of lab coat in her free hand, finding that the motion and sensation of the fabric relaxed her. It was how she had coped after a particularly awkward phone call to pizza delivery a few weeks ago.

The bubble came up on screen, notifying her that Undyne was replying. Well, she was clearly taking her time. Alphys had counted to one hundred by the time the reply came in.

** _I know it’s bound to be something else! If I come over there and find out you’ve been working yourself to the point of illness, you’ll be SORRY!_ **

Undyne probably didn’t mean her words in a threatening way, but Alphys winced at the intent behind them. Did that mean that the Captain was going to take time out of her schedule, almost fully dehydrate herself on the walk through Hotland, just to tell Alphys that she was being immature? Her teeth dug into her bottom lip.

** _=^._.^= it’s not a big deal! i’m just going to take a nap._ **

Alphys let her phone clatter to the floor, only to hear a buzzing noise only a few moments later. Oh, god. Phone conversations. Coupled with her crush. Two of her biggest weaknesses.

She swept her tail out of the way to roll up onto her feet again, picking up the phone as she rooted through the mini-fridge for an energy drink, the coffee pot having been forgotten. “Er, hello, Undyne?” She never was quite sure how the Captain had gotten her phone number.

Undyne’s voice down the other end wasn’t without concern, but she had quite the issue with… well, tone. Everything was shouted or rasped. Not the best way to talk to somebody with crippling anxiety, but Alphys had tried to get used to it over the few months she’d known (and become romantically interested in) Undyne.

“If the King is giving you too much work, let me talk to him!”

“Um.” Alphys adjusted her glasses. “He’s not. I… actually set this out for myself.”

“When did you last sleep!?”

Alphys sighed. More than reason enough for Undyne to launch into a rant about how it was bad to keep yourself in such a condition. Which she did. Unfortunately, Alphys was too tired to really care or process it properly.

“Right, you’re not listening! I’ll have to come down and talk sense into you!”

“NO! I mean, no! Please don’t.” Alphys suddenly stammered. Her workplace was a pig sty, and she hadn’t recharged the little robot whose job it was to recycle drink cans and takeaway boxes. She was also pretty sure she looked like hell.

Not that Undyne would care what she looked like. It was a silly concern, but one had to keep up appearances. “I want you to come to my place tomorrow. Get some sleep tonight. As the Captain of the Royal Guard, I order you to take the day off!”

Alphys didn’t have the heart to tell Undyne that she took direct orders from the King, and not the military. But, still. Maybe they could spend tomorrow watching TV, or some anime DVDs salvaged from the Dump. Just so long as Undyne didn’t attempt to… er, cook.

“Come just after breakfast tomorrow! BYE!”

“Okay, er. Bye.”

With that, the phone rang off.

The prospect of a blanket and pillows had never seemed more amazing to Alphys than it was right now. She put the can of energy drink back into the fridge and decided to stumble upstairs, holding onto the banister for dear life. Feeling her way through the dark bedroom (she couldn’t be bothered to switch on the light), she burrowed under the comforter and finally allowed herself some rest. She’d freak out about being _on a date with Undyne are you kidding me!?_ tomorrow.

For now, it was time to catch up on some well needed sleep.


End file.
